Tag: bilingual

Study shows that babies learn language best from speakers who sound like their caregivers. Language development in bilingual children remains a contested and enigmatic phenomenon, and oftentimes it’s hard to distinguish myth from fact. A study published in the International Journal of Behavioral Development not only sheds important light on how babies...

Danny Brassell gets over himself to make learning fun for all agesWhen I first began teaching elementary school, my principal asked me if I knew any Spanish. After I replied, “Un poquito (a little),” he said, “Good. You’re our new bilingual coordinator!”

Ingrid T. Colón gathers the financial evidence to support multilingualism"fluent bilinguals earned more than $5,400 annually than their monolingual peers"Helping students retain and strengthen their home language affords them many cognitive, social and even health benefits. Research shows that multilingualism can...

A recent voter poll, commissioned by UnidosUS (formerly National Council of La Raza) and Helios Education Foundation, indicates that the majority of Arizonans support dual-language education for children, and nearly 60% of respondents approve of a measure that would allow undocumented students to receive in-state tuition rates.Education is the hot topic in Arizona,...

Bilingual children adapt to the needs of their communication partners better than monolingual children, according to a study published in Child Development, because children growing up bilingually have to manage challenging communication situations more often and deal with the differing communication styles of their parents. Developmental psychologists at the University of Zurich...

According to new research published in Developmental Science and carried out at Canada’s York University, babies who hear two languages at home develop advantages in attention.In the study, infants who were exposed to more than one language showed better attentional control than infants who were exposed to only one language. This means that exposure to bilingual environments should...

Democratic Assemblyman Tony Thurmond managed to come from behind to emerge as California’s new superintendent of public instruction, beating out Marshall Tuck, a fellow Democrat and former Los Angeles executive of charter schools and educational nonprofits.Thurmond sponsored California Assembly Bill 2514 which was passed in September, allocating $300,000 in grant funding to eligible schools, county offices of education and...

Google Trends, which tracks the use of search terms, tweeted this morning that “Dónde Votar” was the top trending search on Google, spiking by more than 3,000%. Within an hour of the tweet, Priorities USA Action, a Democrat super PAC, translated its voter mobilization ads online to Spanish, specifically for voters in Arizona and Florida.This election cycle, Priorities USA Action...

Research into the neurological activity required to switch between languages is providing new insights into the nature of bilingualism.“A remarkable feature of multilingual individuals is their ability to quickly and accurately switch back and forth between their different languages,” explains Esti Blanco-Elorrieta, a New York University doctoral candidate and the lead author of the study, which appears in the...

Lisa A. Frumkes explains why bilingualism is more relevant than ever.In today’s increasingly global and connected world, I interact every day with colleagues from different cultures who speak a wide array of languages. Achieving bilingualism and proficiency in a second language—be it English or another world language—is important for everyone, but especially for 21st-century students.For today’s K–12 students, knowledge...